The Signifier of Time: Music and Sound as Public Utility during the COVID-19 Pandemic

A key feature of the discourse surrounding day-to-day life during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the impact that lockdown had on our perception and experience of time. The restrictions imposed on mobility and interpersonal communication as a result of the government’s measures meant that the way many of us experienced time over the course of our daily lives changed. This carries implications for our experience of music and sound as performative communicative actions that are in no small part defined by temporal boundaries. This paper explores the intersections between sound and time from the perspective of music and sound-production as facets of public utility and communication during a moment of crisis. We consider the role of music in official public guidelines such as the recommended use of ‘Happy Birthday to You!’ as a means of measuring the amount of time required to wash your hands effectively, and explore the phenomenon of the weekly ‘Clap for Carers’ as a mode of performed communicative and communal sound-production that was truly ‘live’ (in that it was not mediated through technology), but which very swiftly took on a divisive political association. These case studies are contextualised alongside historical examples drawn from literature, music, and public discourse concerning the utility of music and sound in both a physical and psychological capacity, illuminating the extent to which active participation in sound-(re)production is tied to our experience of time and communicative synchroneity, and thereby to the wellbeing of both the individual and the collective in public society during the United Kingdom’s first lockdown.